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Tag Archives: rant

I just heard about a 105-year-old woman in Texas who says her secret is that she eats bacon every day. I don’t know if that will stand up to medical scrutiny, but it’s worth something.

The article reveals her bacon “secret”, which should be enough for the whole article. But then it talks about her birthday party, which featured over 200 guests, which is okay, I guess. But then it goes into explaining why bacon has gotten a bad rap lately. It’s somewhat ironic, given the subject of the article. Apparently some research study linked processed meat to a premature death. But check out their results — they claim that eating less than 20g per day (which is 0.7 ounces) could prevent an estimated 3% of premature deaths each year. So if you eat only a bite or two of meat per day, you have a 3% chance of living longer. For people who follow that advice, I wonder what the odds are on premature death due to not enjoying life as much… (To each their own, but that advice wouldn’t work for me.)

The article then references another study saying that even a single serving of processed red meat increased the risk of participants dying by 20%. I may not be a statistician, but I figure the risk of dying is 100%. 🙂 You can eat all the plants you want, but it is appointed for everyone to meet their Maker at some point.

Obviously bacon is somewhat unhealthy — not completely, but in some ways. However, if a single serving of bacon (or any red meat) increases your risk of dying by 20%, and this woman has eaten bacon every day for 105 years so far (which could be up to 38,000 times), what would her risk of dying be? I’d like to see one of those researchers calculate it and go tell her. Maybe she’s like one of those cartoon characters who is invulnerable to the laws of physics because they don’t understand it. 🙂 Either way, whatever she’s doing has worked for her.

This breakfast platter from Tony’s I-75 restaurant in Birch Run, MI, has 1 pound of bacon.

I’m not claiming that all this research is bogus, but I think there’s a LOT more to it than just saying eating meat will kill you early. I’ve known quite a few people — including my grandparents — who ate big country meals all the time (which included lots of butter, gravy, and fried foods), yet lived to be 90+ and still had above-average health. I know that’s a small sample, but when you consider how Americans used to eat versus what we now “know” about nutrition, it’s amazing any of them lived past 25. I’m not saying fattening foods are healthy, but I do wonder if natural / organic fattening foods might be healthier than much of the modern stuff with preservatives and additives and chemicals. I can’t prove it, and I’m not convinced either way yet, but I do think there’s a lot more to nutrition and healthiness than we currently know.

Regardless of whether bacon is good for me or not, I’m now hungry for bacon…

I was explaining to one of my single guy friends the other day how having guests come over to your house is a lot different when you’re married than when you’re single. It’s not enough to just toss the piles of mail and other clutter into your bedroom. No, it’s time for a whole-house cleaning and makeover! This is usually difficult (read: impossible) for men to understand, so I will try to explain. Imagine you’re on a TV game show and every time someone comes over, your house is judged in the categories of how well you decorate, organize, and clean. Forget the practical aspect of your guests understanding that people actually live in the house. Sure, that seems like a valid excuse, and it is, but it only works with men. If I go to a friend’s house and it’s cluttered, I don’t judge him, nor do I really care. As long as my life is not endangered by the clutter and dust, it doesn’t matter. I understand houses get messy sometimes and that there are many things you’d rather do than clean your house every single day. And if you have children, it’s advisable to give up that dream of a house that always looks like a show home in a magazine or on certain TV shows, or you’re going to be frustrated a lot.

Anyway, back to my analogy before I go into rant mode. Imagine you’re on a game show. You and your wife are the contestants, and your guests are the panel of non-celebrity judges (even if their opinions get treated like they’re celebrities). You might as well pretend it’s Martha Stewart showing up to judge you for how your house looks. And that’s a critical aspect here — you are being judged, not just your house. If it looks like people live there, you are obviously a poor housekeeper, and your life priorities must be all wrong. And the categories you’re judged in include much more than just how clean your house is. Even if you dust everything, vacuum, sweep, mop, do all the dishes, clean the bathrooms, etc., you can still receive a poor score. See, it also matters how your furniture looks, and what art you have hanging on the walls, and what curtains you have, and how recently you’ve painted, and what your “theme” is, and so on. I could not possibly list everything on the list because I am male. I just don’t get it.

So let’s get to the next part of the game show — the prizes. Well, there are no prizes. It is theoretically possible to pass through this test unscathed, but unless you enjoy the process of all this housework, it’s not going to feel like winning. And notice I said it’s possible to win in theory. Realize that the difference between theory and practice is a lot bigger in practice than in theory. Most likely you will lose miserably. In some cases, even if you do all you know to do, you still lose regardless, even if the house is spotless and clutter-free, because you should’ve done more stuff, like hanging new curtains and pictures.

There are also some special complications that are bonus during this ordeal. If your guests are your parents or in-laws, you may automatically lose. But don’t let that faze you — you still must try your absolute best or you lose in more ways than one! Sometimes it is a no-win situation, so you may not feel like trying at all, but there are definitely different levels of losing.

Well, there’s my perspective on the game of housekeeping. I would enjoy hearing other perspectives. And if anyone knows how to explain this to wives, to make the situation better, please share. (And if it works, you should probably write a book and go around the country teaching at marriage enrichment seminars.) Also, know that you can leave comments under an alias so your spouse won’t know it’s you. So feel free to speak the unbridled truth.

Here is a cool video of Soundwave breakdancing — this is what you call doing the robot. 🙂 (If you don’t know, Soundwave was one of the Decepticons of Transformers lore; his Earth disguise mode was a jambox / cassette player.)

Supposedly this was initially put on YouTube in 2005, before YouTube was big, and it got to 15 million hits and crashed their servers. I saw it back in 2004 on another site. Think about that — at least 15 million hits, before YouTube was so popular. That’s a lot of Transformers fans, even before Michael Bay’s “re-imagined”* the franchise for his movies. Someone said it was made in 2002, and if so, that makes it even more impressive, because CGI was more difficult back then.

* Hey, I just found a soapbox! I won’t go into the full rant, because I’ve done that before (and I’ve revisited it with video examples of how Transformers could’ve been better), but I will say this — the Transformers universe was very established through hundreds of cartoons and many comic books, and it was a good story with lots of backstory, many great plots, extensive character development — everything you need for a great movie. Instead of using that, Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg (yes, it’s partly his fault, too) made the movie about “a boy and his car”. In doing so, they made Transformers be more about how a teenage boy has to save the world instead of the huge civil war going on between robots that are more intelligent than we are. Instead of making what could’ve been one of the greatest sci-fi stories ever, with characters you admire for their principles and a philosophical side that gets you to thinking — while keeping the great action scenes, we ended up with just the action scenes and lots of explosions. I’m not saying the movies weren’t entertaining at all, but I keep thinking what could’ve been…

I just updated “how Transformers CGI should have looked in the movie” because the video link had changed. It’s been a popular post, with over 1,000 pageviews. I also added a remixed version of the video to it, featuring music from the original series, which makes it even better.

Who is this?

While finding the video, I found a fan-made video of Generation 1 (G1) Transformers using CGI that was well done. It’s not movie-quality, because I’m sure he didn’t have a $200 million budget. But it gives an idea how the characters could have looked in CGI while still resembling their original design. (Why does that matter? You should be able to easily tell who is who. Not only did Michael Bay remove most of their personalities, but he removed most of their unique external features, too. They look very similar in the movies, which should not be.) FYI, consider the video rated PG because of a couple of words and some stuff gets blown up.

I had hoped that the fourth Transformer movie would be rebooted with the new director, to have more story along with the action, but it appears that won’t happen. Sure, the first 3 movies did well financially, but they could be so much better if the story of the Transformers was actually told instead of it being about mankind versus an alien invasion (which has been done so many times).

Let's hope not!

The Autobots and Decepticons are in a civil war, and there’s a deep story behind that which is being ignored in the movies. The movies can (and should) keep the action sequences and big explosions, but let’s hear the story with real character development.

The reason Transformers are still around is because it has a great story with great characters. That’s why the franchise is still going strong and we’re not getting movies about GoBots (which had some cool toys, but no story). Some of you may not remember this, but when Optimus Prime was killed in the original cartoon movie, there was a huge outcry from fans. (The company executives didn’t get it then, either.) Optimus was like the John Wayne of Transformers. In fact, the fan response was so great that the upcoming G.I. Joe cartoon movie was rewritten during production, because in it Duke was going to be killed, so they made him go into a coma instead. Why am I saying all this? To show that fans care about characters with personality.

The other day I was at a BBQ place in Pine Bluff, trying it for the first time. It was one of those great and turrible* experiences all wrapped into one. I ordered a BBQ sandwich, but they put pickles on it! Nowhere on the menu did it say pickles were included on it, nor did the waitress mention it. I’ve ranted (numerous times) about having no tolerance of pickles, so I won’t rant on that again. But they should tell you about such things! They should warn you before exposing you to pickles! I don’t know if they were trying to ruin my day or just completely ignorant of how much some people detest pickles.

Fortunately, the pickles had yet to soil the meat or bread with their evilness, so they were discarded with no harm done. That’s a good thing, or the whole plate would’ve been returned. (I’m not normally one to make a fuss at restaurants, but I have to draw the line at pickles.) At least the food was great, so that was the bright spot on the trip.

There was another bad spot, though — the waitress never came back. I finally had to ask for a refill of sweet tea, and they never brought a ticket. Paying took a long time because they had to match people’s orders with a pile of tickets containing only codes. I hope that type of service isn’t the norm.

Anyway, just thought I’d rant. It’s my soapbox, and I can rant if I want to. 🙂 If you’re expecting a moral of the story, it’s that pickles should not be served at restaurants. If I owned a restaurant…

* turrible is the worse form of terrible, and try to say it like Charles Barkley does, for full effect.

It may be late this week, but our weekly caption contest is finally here. The photo this time features elected officials / lawmakers / politicians in a meeting, but some are playing Solitaire on their laptops while someone else speaks. This actually happened a while back in Connecticut and it was Democrats goofing off, but for the sake of the caption contest, they can be whoever you want.

FYI, the point of this is for you to write something funny to explain this picture. Feel free to get your political rant on, whether about the near government shutdown over budget issues or the current issue of the day, but phrase your response in the form of humor. That is, make it funny, whether using satire or irony or puns or whatever.

(To see our other caption contests, click on the “Say What?” category in the sidebar.)

I was at a restaurant the other night, and I ordered a bacon cheeseburger. I specifically said no pickles (because pickles are evil), yet they included pickles on my burger. Fortunately, neither the meat nor the bun was contaminated by the stank of the pickles, so I could just discard of the lettuce, tomato, and onions, and the burger could be rescued without having to send it back and wait.

I’m going to create a business card that says if the server includes pickles on my order, my meal will be free. I’m going to set it on the table as soon as I sit down, so things are clear. Perhaps the card should read in big letters: “PICKLES ARE EVIL — NO TOLERANCE”. Then the fine print will explain the other terms.

I’ve also considered throwing all pickles in the floor, to make my point more clearly. (Such things have been rumored to have happened before.) At least I’m more tolerant than Stewie Griffin of the show Family Guy, who said, “For every pickle I find, I shall kill you.” 🙂 I’m not too tolerant of evil (and therefore pickles, by association), but I try to be merciful to people, because I’ve discovered not everyone realizes that pickles are evil. I don’t know how they don’t know, but ignorance and deception can lead to strange, irrational behavior, so I try to educate folks on this whenever possible.

BTW, if you stumbled onto this site from a search engine and were not aware that pickles are evil, follow the link above and read the comments — it’s debated thoroughly there. Be enlightened… and share the knowledge with others.